Stolen(15)

But now, she stopped to consider what were her strong points?

Definitely her brain and her body. She’d always excelled at school. And she’d trained hard, partly because she’d been bored and lonely with little companionship other than Cayman, who was a gym rat; but mostly because she feared she might someday have to fight for her life.

Her parents sent her to survival camp and kept a bodyguard on her.

Who wouldn’t be afraid?

Too bad at the moment her body was wrecked, but at least her head was beginning to clear. She closed her eyes, and the counselor’s beaming face appeared. Laura opened her eyes and drew her shoulders back. Maybe, if she could buy time to recover, she could turn this thing around. With logic telling her he wasn’t coming back for her, she decided to trust in reason and let it, rather than fear, guide her actions. She needed water and warmth and food, in that order, to regain her mental and physical strength. She should take care of her body first, then plan her next move.

Out the window, light shone down, bouncing brightly off the scattered patches of snow and packed ice. These conditions told her two things. First, the temperature dropped below freezing at night, so even inside the cabin, she might succumb to hypothermia if she didn’t bundle up. Second, she was at higher altitude—in Denver, there was still no snow on the ground. Hugging the sheet tightly around herself, she ventured onto the porch for a better look around.

The cabin was surrounded by few trees, most of them bristlecone pine and krumholtz—knee timber. There was snow, but only here and there. So, she was nearing, but not yet at, the tree line and the snow line. That meant she was at least 9,000 feet above sea level, maybe 10,000—another tidbit she’d picked up in wilderness camp. A few yards ahead the sun glinted off something shiny—metal. She shaded her eyes and squinted.

An outdoor spigot!

Fresh water!

She hoped.

She lifted her hands to heaven in gratitude. Part of getting strong was getting clean. The bodily fluids caking her skin demoralized her, weakening her spirits, and in this moment, taking back her dignity seemed almost more important than food.

She longed to feel human again.

Suddenly, her back tingled a warning, then went into a full-blown spasm. She massaged it until the ball of pain adjacent to her spine unwound. The muscles in her legs, always well-defined, appeared like small rocks, with puffy veins chiseled on top. When she tried to stretch, the tendons in the backs of her knees felt dangerously brittle, like they might snap. Lying unconscious on a cabin floor, for lord knew how long, had also made her ankles swell.

Her body could no longer be ignored.

Her bowels screamed, and she knew she’d soon be standing in literal shit if she didn’t heed their urgent warning.

The bloating in her feet made her pumps a tight fit, but she managed to get them on. Then in almost one continuous motion, she stumbled off the porch steps, released her bowels and heaved up bile. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand she realized she felt better—no—make that much better. Like her body had rid itself of a deadly poison. For no reason, she laughed. She might be hysterical. In shock. Or maybe she just needed the relief the laughter brought. Next, she scrubbed her face and teeth with snow from a patch that didn’t look too dirty. At the pump, she drank first, before washing her hair and body. The frigid water and air seemed so clean and pure she wanted to linger under that blessed spigot forever, but her skin had taken on a blue hue. Her core temperature was dropping fast.

She had to get back inside.

She eyed the sheet, lying on the ground where she’d discarded it. No way would she wrap that vile thing around her again. She could wait another minute for her clean dress. With a high head, she hurried back to the cabin, naked save for her pumps. Her pace was as quick as her legs would allow, but still left her time to survey her surroundings.

Beyond the cabin, trails wound upward into majestic peaks. Peaks she’d grown up admiring. She had to be somewhere in the Gore mountain range. Her mind began to race with possibilities. She couldn’t have climbed up into the wilderness on her own—that seemed certain. And it was unlikely her abductor would’ve carried her more than a short distance.

There was only one logical conclusion: Somewhere nearby was a road.

This time of year it would be closed, but that wouldn’t stop her from using it any more than it had stopped the monster who’d brought her up here. He had to have driven it as far as he could, then carried her the rest of the way. Or maybe, he’d used an ATV.

In three directions, she saw trails—the question was which one of them led to the road . . . and where would that road lead? She filled her chest with mountain air, and smiled, because it didn’t hurt. At least not as much as her previous breaths had. The more oxygen she took in, the more her lungs . . . and her brain revived. She scuttled inside the cabin and a feeling of déjà vu came over her—there was something excruciatingly familiar about this place. Something locked behind an impenetrable door in her secret mind. That’s what Laura called the part of her brain that refused to give up information. Dr. Duncan, the therapist she’d started seeing when the family moved to DC, said the blank spots in her memory were the result of compartmentalization—a psychological defense mechanism that was, in fact, healthy because it allowed Laura to function normally despite the awful things she’d experienced in the past. Dr. Duncan said not to push it. That Laura was strong, and in time, she’d remember everything. Dr. Webber believed she never would.